It was at first supposed that the choice of the convention for the Presidency would lay between Judge David Davis of Illinois, Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts and Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois. But an unexpected hostility of a very bitter nature soon developed between the supporters of Davis and Adams, and rendered the nomination of either of them impossible. This was evident on the first ballot, on which Mr. Greeley, Senator Trumbull and Gratz Brown each received more votes than Judge Davis, and together more votes than Mr. Adams. It was thus manifest that the Western men would not take Mr. Adams and the Eastern men would not take Judge Davis. The compromise was quickly made upon Greeley, and Gratz Brown was put with him upon the ticket. It was an unfortunate selection. The country did not want any brilliant experiments at the moment. It wanted to settle down to business. And it was to be { 266} foreseen that it would not be willing to make a newspaper man President at such a juncture.
[Sidenote: Acceptance of the Liberal Republican candidates by the Democrats.]
But stranger than the fact that the prince of protectionists was now running for the presidency on a platform which ignored protection, was the fact that the Democratic party, strengthened again by its Southern wing, now accepted the platform of the Liberal Republicans, and in convention at Baltimore, in July following the Cincinnati meeting, nominated the Liberal Republican candidates for the presidency and the vice-presidency as its own candidates. The action of the Democrats, both as to the platform and the candidates, was almost unanimous, and it would be ungracious to express any suspicion of its sincerity. The change of profession on the part of the Southern Democrats was very great indeed, so great as to be surprising, but they had evidently come to the conclusion that it was useless to contend with the North any longer against the civil and political rights of the freedmen, and that it was best for all concerned to accept the inevitable, and try to put themselves in the most advantageous position possible for adjusting the relations of their section to it.
[Sidenote: Mr. Greeley and the Democrats.]